Steve Callaway wrote:
It occurs to me that there is going to be an awful lot
of reworking if we
ever do go to an XML format Wikipedia (and this definitely needs discussion
at some point soon). I would have said that HTML is a more generally
accepted standard and that Wiki formatting is a highly localised phenomenon.
You can do a lot more with HTML format than you ever can with Wiki
formatting.
Au contraire. The beauty of Wiki Markup is that is is independent of
what is sent to the browser.
When XML finally (!) hits the road, all it will take is a few tweaks to
the script so '' is converted to a different tag instead of <I>, and we
can go on writing wiki markup as before.
If anything, XML is another reason for preferring wiki markup to HTML.
Another good reason, from
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks, is:
It's an intelligence test of sorts to be able to
edit a wiki page.
It's not rocket science, but it doesn't appeal to the
VideoAddicts
<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?VideoAddicts>. If it doesn't appeal, they don't
participate, which leaves those of us who read and write to get on with
rational discourse.